Tuesday, September 2, 2014

It's la rentrèe in France. Summer has ended, les vacances, a memory and time for back to school and back to work. Bakeries are back on regular opening hours.

Parents line up at the stationary stores to purchase school supplies.

In offices those waiting emails get answered and projects resumed after a three month hiatus. The rule of thumb is that if your proposal or project isn't done and dusted by the end of May - forget about it until September.

There's a great energy you can notice in the air - people are tanned, refreshed and have so much to talk about ie their vacances over the water cooler and in the cafes. Already plans get in the works for upcoming school holidays - where will we take the children in October for the next holiday chunk? Whose family will we spend the winter holidays with? Everything is forward progression. New art exhibits, photography and fashion shows.

Les Chèvres, the goats on my friend's farm, will almost enjoy a new sport for la rentrèe.

The Alpaca's looked on and took no part.

We introduced the trampoline to the goats. Curious they edged further.

Marshall, sniffed and mounted the trampoline.

Cappuchino, brown and white, almost joined Marshall.

Diva joined.

But none of them got the hang of jumping on the trampoline.

Bentley, also curious, came by to check it out.

In the end they enjoyed eating the rose bushes and hay in the field.

Here's the giant artichoke - some of you may remember from near Monterey at Left Coast Crime.

Summer's over, long live Indian Summer! Oh... wait... that's probably P.I. (no, not Private Investigator, Politically Incorrect!) now that we're not supposed to use the word 'Indian' except when referring to people who are actually FROM India. Don't you hate it when a term is no longer acceptable and there's no satisfactory term to replace it? There must be a word for that...

Where was I? Oh. The first picture above took me a second, as at first it looked like the cores of old tree limbs on a fallen tree that's been rotting in the forest and all that's left of the limbs are the cores where the trunks rotted away. Do you know what I mean? There must be a word for those...